Thousands of ships hung above Cyre, each one as large as a small city. Their shadows darkened the Sun and the Scar, so that the latter’s gray, twinkling light only slipped through their gaps.

The living carriers of the Sovereign Swarm spewed their machine-spawn. Using the dam’s long-range scanners, Khadam could see millions of pods dropping down from the bellies of the ships. Silent, and smooth, running in dull gray streams toward planetfall. They lit up the atmosphere, and smacked into the planet, throwing up clouds of dust and debris and water that would eventually cover the world… except for a circle directly below the dam.

Normally, the dams held the Light back, but they also siphoned that raw energy from the Scar. Khadam redirected the dam’s energy—the same energy that the Emperor had once used to expand his empire across the stars—to cast an umbrella of Light over the city of Cyre.

Anything that tried to cross that barrier would never cross anything ever again.

But the Light barrier would not hold forever. Even as it protected the city, it ripped through the crust of the planet, grinding metal and minerals and molten rock into useless matter. The emissions were stable thus far, but without proper testing, Khadam didn’t know if it would hold for an hour, a day, or a hundred years.

A vibration, like the longing song of some deep-ocean whale, roared through the dam. OK, Khadam thought, I probably don’t have a hundred years, then.

It was time to leave the relative peace and quiet of the Historian’s ancient home.

Through her mental interface, Khadam kept a few of her diagnostic tabs locked open, so she could check in with the dam at a moment’s notice. Then, she stepped onto the gate, and sent herself down to the planet’s surface.

The blast of panicked noise was a force all of its own. Crowds of scaled xenos roared and screamed and shoved to get onto the gate, while the Queen’s guards forced them back, sometimes firing into the air over their heads. Not all were deterred, until one dark-winged falcyr started aiming lower, killing a cyran who was trying to shove others out of the line.

Clouds of smoke spread down from the hills where the nobles kept their estates. The smoke choked the gardens and orchards, and filled the alleys between those huge, marble buildings that lorded over the main avenue. More crowds poured in through the smoke. Only the western approach was empty, and Khadam didn’t have to guess why. There were bodies in the street, bodies covered with metal. Growing machine-made limbs and digits and appendages in all the wrong places. The Light barrier had killed them instantly, as well as the cyrans’ other constructs: drudges and small, two-legged chikroids and great, lumbering haulers.

Only Khadam’s internal implants were still operational. A slim thread still connected her to the dam above, warning her of its increasing vibrations. Not critical, but not good. Without her external muscle implants, Khadam’s body felt heavy. Her extra visual sensors were dark, too. Still, it was better than being the Emperor’s hand puppet, and she was already thinking about which implants she would need to extract and repair.

To the south, the middle and lower districts bled together. Smaller homes, stacked on top of each other, or built into hillsides. Khadam could see the edge of her Light barrier rising into the sky, a shifting wall of refracted light, like something made of glass but nowhere near as solid.

A river separated the hills from the outer growth of the city, and where the barrier touched the river, the water seemed to explode upward, as if compelled by some constant, invisible force. The barrier churned trees and houses and stone foundations into dust, it carved through the very earth, releasing a super-heated steam from the depths of the planet. And high above, where the barrier touched the atmosphere of the planet, it devoured it. Turning it into nothing, so that Khadam could see pinpricks of the Swarm’s ships shining overhead.

Tails of light, like the streaks of meteors, ripped across the upper atmosphere as the Swarm sent another wave of its machines. One streak glowed brighter than the rest as it screamed toward the city; a machine, whose reticulated limbs were folded behind it, giving it a sleek shape that pierced the air and created a cone of fire that ran from tip to tail.

The drone slammed into the Light barrier.

The crowds shoved and surged. Thousands of cyrans threw themselves to the ground, as if that might protect them.

Khadam, hands folded behind her back, was the only one who didn’t flinch, as the drone atomized itself against the glassy refraction of her barrier. Not a single speck of shrapnel passed through. There was only the screaming sound of its own wind, suddenly cut off.

More drones streaked across the sky, silently destroying themselves against the barrier, before the Swarm slowed its advance, and spread its many machines around the outer edges of the barrier. Some went about destroying the pieces of the city outside the barrier. Some simply hovered, looking inward. But all the xenos inside were safe. For now.

High above, the clouds of Cyre in the summer were slowly pulled into the Light, making a twisting spiral of white cotton high above the city. The gate opened, sending another ten thousand xenos to Gaiam. A mere fraction of the remaining crowds.

The crowds surged anew, as hundreds of thousands of people jostled for a better position. A better chance at life. But the gate could only hold so many bodies.

Not everyone is going to make it, Khadam thought.

The longer they held the gate open—the longer Khadam’s barrier survived—the more xenos they would save.

Outside the barrier, the world of Cyre was a churning wasteland, swarming with drones and choked with smoke from fires that dotted the hills. The Emperor’s pyramid, which was mostly beyond the reach of the barrier, was covered in machine-made bodies. Khadam could only guess what the Swarm intended to do with it.

More ordinance rained from the sky, thrashing the ocean and turning it from a deep blue to a muddy silt color. The Swarm would decapitate the mountains that rose in the far distance, and infest every village across the planet.

If they found resources, they would colonize the planet. If they didn’t, they would destroy it.

Nothing would ever live on Cyre again.

“Human!” a black-feathered xeno called out desperately to her. It was Poire’s avian, the one called Eolh. He was struggling under the weight of the android, who had all but collapsed in his arms. Khadam’s heart dropped.

No.

How could she have forgotten? The android had become such a natural companion to her, Khadam hadn’t considered what the Light would do to her—a machine like any other.

Khadam threw herself at Laykis. Hoping. Begging. What a senseless way to die.

How could I forget?

…but the android was harder to kill than that. Laykis struggled to lift her chin, a weak glow in her eyes.

“How?” Khadam asked, breathlessly. “How are you still alive, machine?”

A wordless rasp echoed from Laykis’s voicebox. Her head fell, and she slumped heavier in Eolh’s arms. Her eyes went dark.

“What do we do?” Eolh said.

The android should be dead, and yet she clung to life, despite the surging power of the Light raining down on this city. How? Khadam didn’t know.

“Get her on the gate,” Khadam said. “Immediately.”

“Wait,” Laykis’s voice clicked, weakly. Her arm struggled to point up, “Look at the dam.”

Some absurd part of Khadam didn’t want to look up, as if she might be able to ignore whatever fresh nightmare had heaped itself upon them. She bit back, and forced herself to gaze at the sky.

This time, her heart didn’t just drop. It froze and fell and shattered all in a single breath. The Swarm’s carriers were gathering in a wide ring around the dam.

“They’re just sitting there,” Eolh said.

Khadam said, taking one Laykis’s arms. “We have less time than I thought.”

“What are they doing?” Eolh asked.

“Learning. It’s time to leave, avian. All of us.”

“The Queen,” Eolh said, “She’s still helping the others organize the evacuation.”

High above, a subtle movement caught Khadam’s attention. The Swarm’s ships made some final adjustments in their holding pattern. Their odd, twisting shapes and hap-hazardly placed modules jutted out, giving them an almost organic look as they locked together in a ring of metal around the dam.

Then, they began to fire. Twin energy beams, one on either side of the ring, lanced into the dam.

An ear-splitting alarm wracked Khadam’s brain. The vibrations of the dam screeched and damage reports started pouring in.

And the Light barrier shimmered.

The crowds went oddly still, as everyone looked up.

The first two ships ceased firing, but their neighbors picked up where they left off. Capital lances, perhaps the only energy weapon large enough to pierce the resistant black metal of the dam. Firing in bursts of two, walking a slow circle of energized power around the dam. They’re going to saw it in half.

“We have to go,” Khadam said. “Before they break the dam.”

“Can’t,” Eolh croaked. “The gate is still charging. And the Queen-”

A gap formed in the barrier, only for a brief moment. Before it sealed itself shut, atomized gas hissed inside. Above, the twin pulsing lights of the Swarm’s capital lances continued to spiral clockwise.

“Give me the android,” Khadam said, “And you go find your Queen.”

Eolh shouldered Laykis into Khadam’s arms, and took off without a second glance.

The masses spread for Khadam, and she dragged Laykis with her. All these people. Dead. She tried not to think about it as she plunged toward the gate. But once there, she tapped into the static feed, and realized she had made a mistake. Each time they opened the gate, they used all its energy. More kept pouring in from the dam, but with each opening, they used it up again.

Eolh’s wings gusted wind over the gate as he landed hard next to Khadam.

“Ryke is on her way,” he said breathlessly. Then, he noticed Khadam’s hands clenched into fists. “What’s wrong?”

“Twenty minutes. I didn’t think about saving power. I forgot to account for repeated use. I-”

The Barrier shimmered again, letting in a gasp of fresh air. It closed up slower this time, and the drones lurking just out of its reach were growing interested.

“What can we do?” Eolh asked. Not a hint of panic in his voice. In the face of disaster, he was so controlled. Almost… human.

“The ships. They’re breaking the dam. When they do, the Scar will be uncontained.”

“And this barrier will fall?”

“There will be nothing left.”

Feathered fingers closed on her shoulder. She found herself, staring into the alien’s face. That huge beak, and those shining feathers, so far from human, and yet so close to the real thing. “Tell me what to do.”

Her thoughts were a blur as she worked through the possibilities. Each time, she landed on only one: so distant and unlikely as to be deemed pointless. It would destroy the dam. It would destroy the planet.

It will buy us time.

Khadam pulled a linen pouch hanging from the cord she was using as a belt. Laykis had stolen it for her from one of the dead cyran priests upon leaving the Emperor’s throne. The pouch was little more than a crude piece of fabric, wrapped around a small, cube-shaped object. A weapon that would only work once.

“What are they?”

“Negation cubes. They’re… dangerous. Use it down here, and you’ll destroy the gate. But if you take them up there…”

“How do I get up there?”

“The gate,” Khadam hated to even talk about it. “It has enough power now to send one, and the distance is not so vast.”

Eolh took the bag from her hand, without saying anything.

Khadam gave him instructions on how to use it. He asked only a few questions. She said, “Eolh, It might not work.”

He ignored her, and crouched down next to Laykis, who was laying silent—not yet dormant—on the gate. “Android. Will you do something for me?”

Laykis clicked in the affirmative, still not moving.

“When you see her, tell Ryke I love her. More than life itself.”

“I will,” Laykis said weakly.

“I owe you everything.”

“If I could,” Laykis clicked out, “I would trade places with you, oh Guardian of the Divine.”

“You did, once. Remember?”

“I will never forget.”

He turned to Khadam then, and said. “If you see the fledge again, will you tell him… Tell him I wish I could have gone with him.”

Khadam nodded.

Eolh spread out his wings, his radiant black feathers cutting a shadow across the seething crowds. Khadam sent an impulse through the gate, and a digital voice roared at the crowds to get off the gate.

Only one person tried to stop him. The Queen’s screeching cries echoed over the stones and the rabble of Cyre. She tried to fly at him, to stop him from leaving. Eolh never took his eyes off her, as the gate opened, and the Light swallowed him whole.

***

The Library was a tomb, frosty and quiet, except for the deep grinding sound rumbling through every inch of the halls, slowly rotating around him.

The Swarm’s siege weapons, Eolh thought. He did his best to ignore them. The lights were a dim blue, and they pulsed brighter and darker, and brighter again. Some kind of silent alarm.

Eolh’s beak chattered as he wrapped his arms around himself. The damned Historians kept their home cold, didn’t they? Hopefully, he wouldn’t be here long enough to freeze to death. Eolh wandered down the hall, hoping he was going the right way to the elevator. Khadam told him he couldn’t miss it, but in these black halls, every intersection looked the same.

There was an android, laying on the ground. It looked humanoid, yes, but so rigid and stiff and nothing like Laykis’s curving skelature. One of the Historian’s servants. They must have shut them down when they left. Which means I’ll get no help from them. In its arms, it cradled a helmet. One of the bubble things the Historian’s wore on their heads. He inspected the rim of the helmet, and when he decided his beak might fit inside if he tucked his chin in, he put it under his arm and carried it with him.

Khadam told him there was only one place in the whole Library where the cubes would work. And so, Eolh headed toward the elevator.

A concave opening in a black column reminded Eolh of the second time he had caught up with Poire, when he and Ryke and Poire left the fledge’s ruined home. An elevator. Unconsciously, Eolh flexed his metal hand.

“This must be it.” His voice sounded so small in the dark, emergency lighting of the dam, and his words came out in clouds of vapor.

Eolh stepped inside. A glass wall slid down from the ceiling, closing him in.

“That’s not good,” he said. But something about his voice woke up the being that lived in the walls, or whatever humans do to make their machines talk and think.

“Welcome, unauthorized visitor. Where would you like to go?”

“Uh,” Eolh said. “Up. I guess.”

A metallic substance dripped over the glass, forming a pressure seal. The floor did not jerk. It simply started moving, as if it had always been moving.

After a few minutes, Eolh couldn’t tell if he was moving at all. Then, the metal covering dripped away, leaving only the glass. And there, Eolh could see the whole city falling below him, all those strange metal shapes growing smaller and more complex.

From up here, the city looked like a black rose with petals covered in steeples and towers. Strokes of blue lightning leaped from peak to peak, crawling random paths across the Library’s many platforms, some as large as the Cauldron itself. There were specks of gray floating in clouds over the city, too, and sometimes the lightning streaked through these and knocked them out of the sky. Drones? Fangs? Or something else? He couldn’t tell this far away.

Beyond, the vast ships of the Swarm continued their destructive dance. A ring of menacing metal, slowly orbiting the Library. Each one was covered in such complex machinery that Eolh couldn’t guess at any of their parts. Except for the lances. Those were obvious, by the perfect synchronicity of which they lit up—orange jets of light, blasting from the underbellies of those hulking machines, making the whole Library rumble.

A gray speck lifted up from the black rose. It moved so fast, Eolh almost didn’t see it until it smacked into the elevator, leaving cracks in the glass. Thick, machine tentacles grabbed onto the sides of the glass, grinding into it for purchase, as a drone hefted its body up.

Eolh threw himself against the back of the elevator. He stared at the drone, staring at him. An alarm was pounidng in the elevator. Or maybe that was just Eolh’s heart.

Then, the drone used its tentacles to pull itself away, and slam into the glass, shattering it. Shards spat into the elevator. Before he could throw his arms up to block them, the shards were sucked back out. Then, Eolh felt the vacuum of space grip his whole body, lurching him forward. Trying to suck him out. A tentacle caught his arm and wrapped loops around his wing feathers. Eolh grabbed the tentacle with his metal hand, and squeezed. The tentacle sheered off. The drone was yanked out of the elevator, and fell back toward the Library below.

But elevator was broken. With the pressure gone, his lungs felt like they were exploding. He couldn’t breathe. Water beaded and vaporized around his eyes, until he was blind. Eolh crammed his head into the Historian’s helmet over, not caring that his beak scraped against the glass. It sealed, uncomfortably tight, around his neck. Gas poured in, and he gasped for breath. Blinked away the tears in his eyes.

Ten drones floated outside the elevator. Watching him. Learning.

Beyond, the ring of city-sized ships kept up their pulsing siege.

Eolh dug into Khadam’s satchel, and pulled out three cubes, like oversized dice made of some shining alloy. Only, instead of pips, these dice were covered with tiny, geometric patterns that made no sense to Eolh. How can something so small be of any use here?

“Gods above. Hear my prayer. Make this work.”

One of the drones flung itself at him.

He squeezed all three of the cubes at the same time, exactly as Khadam had showed him. And felt nothing. No sound. No light. No vibration, no feedback at all.

Only silence.

Not even the rumbling of the Swarm’s siege lances.

The drones that were watching him were drifted uselessly across the void. One dead drone slammed into elevator, crumpling it inward. Eolh had just enough space to twist his body out of the elevator, and into open space.

He flapped his arms madly, but found that he succeeded only in spinning. He was floating up.

He reached out, trying to grab the elevator shaft. Too far. And only growing farther. His body was not built for null gravity, but he had enough presence of mind to stop flailing. Instead, he took a slow breath (as much as the helmet would allow) and tried to calm himself as he spun slowly away from the Library. Frost bit into his fingers and hands, and he couldn’t feel his legs.

High above, a towering storm of energy became a vortex of white, shining mist that funneled down into the dam. The funnel alone must’ve been hundreds of miles tall. It flowed into the highest black tower, and though the many platforms of the dam were now shattered and falling away from each other, Khadam’s barrier still shone over the planet below.

“I hope it was enough,” he said to no one. To anyone who was listening. “I did everything I could.

The Scar glittered, a shining wound in reality itself. How long did he float toward it? It seemed to grow. To pull him in, until all he could see was Light.

No more did it flash, or crackle like distant lightning. A deep, majestic light burst violently from its infinite depths, splintering and tearing the wound open. The Scar had been asleep. No more.

***

Queen Ryke av’Ryka was kneeling on the gate, her arms pinned to her sides by some awful traitor. Despite her screeching, she did not have the strength to fight off all her guards. She hated them. She would claw at their eyes and tear out their hearts if she had to.

She wanted only one thing, and him, she could not have.

Ryke would never forgive Eolh for breaking his promise.

The Swarm’s siege vessels were inert. Their ring bumped and jostled and split itself open. But the damage had been done. The Library would fall, and the Scar seethed as it split open the void, stretching beyond the furthest horizon. Swallowing the Swarm ships that lay dead in space.

Eolh had not saved the dam, but he had bought time. Had bought them hours, in exchange for a lifetime.

Even now, the rest of the Swarm was departing, making their own smears of light as they warped away, fleeing the brutal brightness of the Scar.

The gate keened as the arms spun faster and faster. Preparing to take the last people away from the godsforsaken planet.

Ryke didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay. She wanted to die.

The gate opened, and the sky above the Cauldron was clear and blue and beautiful. Her screams echoed agony across the cliffs.

***

“Kanya,” Eolh said, “If you are out there. Keep her safe for me.”

Eolh glanced at his fingertips and found that there was no separation between his feathers, his skin, and the space around him. Everything was made of light.

How long would he be like this, before the Scar decided to swallow him whole?

Eolh wouldn’t wait. He had done what needed to be done. No more debts to be paid. The cold sank its teeth into his chest now, and he could feel his heart slowing. So drowsy. Almost drunk.

He took off his helmet, hoping to end it faster.

Instead, he found that he could breathe. Inhaled deep, the scent of burning metal sharp in his nares. The expanse of the Scar sparkled in a way he hadn’t noticed before. More than a refraction of light, it created new colors, just for him. It wasn’t just one glowing source, but tens of thousands of… clouds? Or oceans? Or something, somehow all of them connected. Growing brighter and wider and impossibly vast, until his mind could not register distance at all.

He held out his avian hand, as if to touch the edge of the Scar, though it might’ve been millions of miles away. The longest feather was the first to go. Like ash, it crumbled into a million pieces. His finger. His hand.

And Laykis’s hand, too. All that metal, becoming the same formless dust.

He thought of all the debts he would leave behind. The gangs, the bosses. The jobs and urchins and tinkers. The Green Doctor. On all of Gaiam, and Cyre too.

Of all the promises, there had only been one a handful he had meant to keep. “Forgive me,” he said. “Ryke.”

Eolh closed his eyes. Felt a kind of peace—the one that all beings experience, just before they’re born. Like the soft touch of an old friend, pulling him in. Welcoming him.

Fire seared his veins, as if he had dipped himself in a heat furnace. Then, it was numb. His arms and wings and legs were dissolved. His blood, burned away. His muscles and bones…

Is that it?

Despite the pain, Eolh crowed a laugh before the Scar took the last breath from his lungs.